


matteawan

by softangelicbean



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Aaron Hotchner Has Issues, Alternate Universe - Mental Institution, F/M, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Spencer Reid Needs a Hug, Toxic Relationship, psychiatrist!aaron hotchner, unsub!spencer reid - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:08:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29294184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softangelicbean/pseuds/softangelicbean
Summary: Both Doctors have some issues to work through. Aaron embraces his patient’s insanity, and Spencer finds solace in his psychiatrist.
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner/Spencer Reid, Catherine "Cat" Adams/Spencer Reid, Maeve Donovan/Spencer Reid
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	1. Patient 030980

**Author's Note:**

> I’m taking a joker/Harley trope and putting a spin on it but seriously nothing about Reid and Hotch is similar to them! Also took lots of creative liberty so some of the stuff happening in this fic literally is the opposite of what happens in the actual show have fun trying to keep up because me too

He watched the clock tick while he drowned out the warnings. It was moving faster than it ever had, he was going to cut his interview short if Sanderson didn’t shut up. 

“And he’s smart. Smarter than you think, seriously be careful in there.” 

Aaron huffed and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He nodded impatiently at Sanderson and pointed at the files in his hands, indicating that he already knew everything the head warden was trying to tell him. 

Sanderson tsked and shrugged his shoulders. 

“Just looking out for you, Hotchner. No amount of PhDs are going to prepare you for that fucker. He is beyond deranged.” 

Aaron doubted that. His multiple PhD’s in psychology, psychiatry, and forensic science had all but prepared him for moments like this. He was a hard worker, a people reader, a judge of character and a damn good profiler. Four years as a federal agent and he’d seen more shit than anyone should. 

And now he’d settled, almost retired really. Decided to do reports and journals on the “deranged” criminals they kept at Matteawan. He knew that wasn’t necessarily something anyone would count as retirement, but he had done too much school to not finish out strong. He needed to do more to help. 

He didn’t know really who he wanted to help, but damn it he couldn’t just sit still. 

He felt momentary jolts of regret every time Sanderson brought up the murderer. Sanderson had so little faith in Aaron, so little faith in psychiatrists. There couldn’t be anything about this man that Aaron hadn’t seen, heard, or thought of. 

He finished signing off on some papers and slid them across the warden’s desk, picking up his briefcase and straightening his lab coat. 

“Sanderson,” he spoke, “I’ll have this murderer spinning in circles for me by the time I’m finished. Try to stop fretting for my life. I’ll be fine.”

Aaron ran over the basics in his head as he was escorted to the patient’s cell. It was a long walk, hallway walls lined with sickly green subway tiles, dingy lighting buzzing overhead. Hell, who could blame them? He would go insane too.

The patient was 24 years old, had an IQ of 187. After the amount of that idiotic electroshock therapy this dump had instituted, he wasn’t sure how high that IQ stood. 

Genetically, schizophrenia was in the books for the patient and he also possessed multiple PhDs. Obviously revoked. But the smarts were still there. Chemistry, mathematics, biology, physics, and several bachelors in other varying subjects. 

The only thing that intimidated Aaron, (and you could hardly claim that) was the eidetic memory the patient possessed. Anything and everything the man had heard, learned, seen. He remembered. Aaron’s micro expressions needed to be kept to a minimum, his tongue held until communication was necessary. 

They were outside the door now, and Aaron took a deep breath. This was the most important moment. 

The first impression. This is where he would get the most valuable reactions, responses, answers and confessions. He straightened his lab coat once again and slid his glasses up his nose, nodded at the security guards. 

The door was unbolted and opened, allowing Aaron to step inside just enough for the orderly to slip his way out and slam the door closed as quickly as possible. 

He took in the room. It looked the same as most of them; the green walls, cement floors, a cot and a sink. It smelled clean, which was a newer sensation for Aaron. 

And the patient was sitting at the desk, hands cuffed to the metal loop underneath the tabletop.

Aaron had never seen pictures before, only words inside the files describing the patient. Lanky, thin build, a good six foot, hazel eyes, brown hair that was growing into an unruly rats nest of curls. 

All of that was expected. Aaron was surprised at how....soft the patient looked. Almost as if he were the hurt one, not the one hurting others. 

“Patient 030980. Good afternoon.”

The man nodded, eyes traveling to Aaron’s lab coat, then his files, then his shoes and back to his face. 

“Doctor,” he greeted back. 

Aaron sat opposite the man, setting his file on the desk and his briefcase next to his chair. 

“I understand you used to go by that title yourself, patient.”

He hummed in response, eyes fixed on his hands chained together in his lap. 

Aaron let the silence sit for a couple of minutes, examining the man. He wasn’t fidgeting, his breathing was evenly regulated, his eyes never left their gaze and he sat still as a statue in a stiff-backed position. 

Aaron reveled silently. This man had killed over 60 people in the past two years and was able to sit this still under the scrutiny of an ex fed? Shit, maybe he was deranged. 

“Look, you and I both know I’m only here to understand you a little better, maybe write a paper on the subject of criminal insanity, and give some people some answers. So why don’t you just start babbling. Do some confessing, lay your heart out there?” 

Aaron tried not to smile as he gave his rehearsed speech and watched for a reaction from  
the patient. 

There wasn’t one. He remained stoic for several minutes and then looked up, his stare piercing directly into Aaron’s. 

“My heart no longer resides in me, Doctor Hotchner. And while I appreciate your attempts to give answers back to humanity on why I killed guilty people, I cannot help you.” 

“Why can’t you help me? I want to help you.”

“How can you help me?” 

Aaron shrugged, elated that the patient was answering questions with questions. 

“Maybe if you helped me we could become friends and we could talk through what’s happening in that head of yours. I know it’s a lot.  
You remember everything you’ve ever seen. You remember their last words, what it smelled like seconds before they died. Don’t you want that off of your chest?”

“No,” the patient replied. 

Aaron stared at him blankly, letting the silence fall again. Something wasn’t right.

“But,” the patient started, “I could... use a friend.”

Better. 

“Well then we will start off as friends. You can call me Aaron, and instead of calling you patient 030980, what should I call you?” 

The patient’s voice was soft and scratchy when he whispered back, 

“You can call me by my name. Reid. Spencer Reid.”


	2. Insanity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is Dr. Hotchner’s third visit. Spencer is still zipped shut.

Aaron shifted in his seat, moving so that he was sitting comfortably with one leg draped over the other. He motioned with his arm for his new friend to do the same.

Spencer Reid looked at him warily and didn’t budge, even with his restraints having been removed.

Aaron had ordered the guards to leave him uncuffed on the second visit, wanting the base level of trust to be created as soon as it possibly could. This was his third visit, he hadn’t seen Spencer in two days.

The room hadn’t changed at all since Aaron’s second visit, the table was in the exact same spot and had collected a thin layer of dust on it. Spencer neatly made his bed every morning. Aaron noted that his nails were painstakingly short. His hair was wild, but his face was clean shaven.

“How have you been doing for the past couple of days, Spencer?”

Silence. Spencer held his empty stare that pierced into Aaron, it rarely budged during their meetings.

Aaron nodded, and continued on with his small talk. The last visit he had Spencer had spoken a total of four words, and the rest of the visit had been spent in silence and randomly unanswered questions.

“I’m sure it gets boring in here, with no one to talk to regularly or anything to keep you busy. Would you like books, or a pencil and some paper? I can make sure those are acquired for you.”

“Why would you do that?” the man asked, his voice scratchy from not being used.

“Because if I were you, regardless of whether or not I was actually insane, being here in this room with absolutely nothing to do would drive me to insanity eventually.”

Aaron watched as Spencer blinked and his nose twitched slightly, his hands staying glued to the table top. He wondered if he was going to move his arms, or keep to the position of being handcuffed.

“You don’t think I’m insane?”

Aaron couldn’t help the laugh that escaped his throat, shaking his head slightly and finally opening his file, spreading it on top of the table.

“No, Spencer, I don’t think you’re insane. Do you think you’re insane?”

“The term insanity derives from the late 16th century Latin word ‘ _insanitas_ ’ from ‘ _insanus_ ’. It means to be extremely foolish or irrational, usually referring to someone suffering from madness or mental illness.”

Aaron blinked, surprised when Spencer finally tore his eyes down and landed them on his hands fixed on the table. He saw a faint pink blush tint his cheekbones, traveling down Spencer’s neck. He was embarrassed.

“No, I don’t think I’m insane,” he sighed.

Aaron dipped his head, giving Spencer’s file a once over before allowing his gaze to travel back to the man. His gray jumpsuit hung limply on his frame, making Spencer look homely. It was depressing.

“Let’s talk about your childhood, growing up. It looks like a lot of your raising was done by your mother. Is that correct?”

Spencer grunted, still fixing on his own hands.

“William Reid walked out on us when I was 8. My mother was already starting to show signs of her oncoming schizophrenia, and he could not handle it. Didn’t want anything to do with her illness, didn’t want anything to do with me. My mother taught me my love for books, and she read to me everyday, even when she—,” Spencer stopped.

Aaron furrowed his brow, reaching his arm out to pat Spencer and encourage him to keep talking. Spencer flinched away from the touch, jaw clenching and eyes closing tight.

Aaron kept his voice steady.

“Spencer, we don’t have to talk about Diana if it makes you uncomfortable. We can talk about something else. Was school a happy subject for you?”

Aaron didn’t expect the snort that came out of the young man opposite him. He assumed since Spencer had been such an excelled student, maybe school was something he had looked forward to.

“Dr. Hotchner, I was a 12 year old prodigy in a Las Vegas public high school. Nothing about school was happy for me.”

Aaron was at a loss for conversation. Nothing about Spencer’s childhood seemed pleasant. That definitely was a component to his murders, he was sure, but how? For what?

“Dr. Hotchner, if you want to ask me questions about the people I murdered, you may get on with it. I have already spoken to several counselors and therapists about my upbringing and childhood trauma. I do not need your second opinion, with all due respect.”

Aaron shrugged, tempted to take the out but something was bugging him about the young doctor. There wasn’t any light in his eyes. Not even when he spoke of his mother, and yet he sounded as if he cared for her. Was this depression, or was it madness? Had Spencer lost the ability to empathize? To feel anything himself?

“I do, but I told you I wanted to be your friend, Spencer. Friends don’t just use each other for information. I want to know how you feel. I care about that,” Aaron said in a hushed tone, finding himself meaning the words he was saying.

Whether Spencer believed him or not wasn’t something he could discern. The young man’s eyes had not left the table for the past half hour.

“Well, if you really care to know, I don’t feel much of anything these days, doctor,” Spencer admitted, his voice losing some scratch after warming up to talking.

Aaron kept quiet, willing the patient to continue talking. He saw wheels turning in that genius brain, but doubted anything would escape his lips. Spencer spent most of his time in this room completely mute. Did he even speak to the orderlies? It had to be so lonely.

“If you are still offering those books, I can make a list of several I haven’t read yet, if I could.”

Aaron opened and closed his mouth, nodding as he pulled a pen and a notepad out of his briefcase from the floor. He slid it to Spencer, watching the man’s hands and eyes finally come to life as he got a firm grip on the pen and begin to scribble.

It took him a couple of minutes to fill the majority of the page, Aaron’s small grin growing as the list grew longer. The genius was ambitious.

Once he was finished, he handed the list back to Aaron and shook his hair out of his face, readjusting his hands to intertwine on top of the table and his eyes refocused onto Aaron’s.

“This list in 38 books long. And you have—,” Aaron squinted and tried to make out the doctor’s loopy and quirky handwriting.

“You have an edition of an encyclopedia set listed on here,” Aaron says in disbelief. Was this a joke?

“It’s one of my favorites,” Spencer quickly defends, the blush dusting his cheeks once more.

“I can read 20,000 words per minute.”

That astonished Aaron, but he just slipped the paper into his suit jacket and returned the pen to his briefcase, along with the file that sat on the table.

“What are some books you like to read?” Spencer asked evenly, scrunching his nose once again.

Aaron raised his eyebrows, thrown that Spencer was interested in what he liked to read. Then again, he did say he wanted a friend, so maybe this was the start of that — of becoming friends.

“Well, strangely enough I do enjoy psychology books, and crime journals. They’re interesting to me, but if I want to wind down I do love science fiction. C.S Lewis is a personal favorite of mine.”

“Me too,” Spencer wisps, his mouth almost forming a grin.

“Have you read his space trilogy?” Aaron asks excitedly, shocked that he and Spencer had found something in common.

“I started it, I was on the second book and never got around to finishing it. That’s why it’s on the list I gave you.”

“What stopped you?”

Spencer gave a slight chuckle that sent a small chill down Aaron’s spine. The young man’s eyes were steely as he sighed and began to rub his own thumb against the other.

“I was busy putting Cat Adams in federal penitentiary to ever get around to finishing the book, Dr. Hotchner.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have an entire plot map created for this story yet I’m so lazy ahahah

**Author's Note:**

> ooh boy lmk what ya think


End file.
